The Court of Cassation approved a suspended sentence for a Jehovah's Witness from Birobidzhan

In Vladivostok, the 9th Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction confirmed the sentence of Jehovah's Witness from Birobidzhan, Irina Lokhvitskaya. This was reported by the portal “Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia”.

In July 2021, the Birobidzhansky District Court found the believer guilty under the article on participation in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). The woman was given a two and a half year suspended sentence, two years of probation and a year of restricted freedom. At that time she was 59 years old. In November 2021, the verdict was approved by the Court of the Jewish Autonomous Region.

A criminal casewas opened against Lokhvitskaya and seven other people in February 2020. The reason for this was religious meetings at which believers sang songs, listened to sermons and discussed texts from the Bible.

In February 2021, the court found Lokhvitskaya’s son Arthur guilty under the article on participation in the activities of an extremist organization (Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). He was sentenced to two years of suspended imprisonment. On July 20, Lokhvitskaya’s daughter-in-law Anna was sentenced to two and a half years probation under the same article.

• In 2017, the Supreme Court recognized the “Administrative Center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia” as an extremist organization, liquidated it and banned its activities in Russia. All organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses were included in the list of prohibited ones, after which a stream of criminal cases against believers began. Rosfinmonitoring has added hundreds of Russian followers of Jehovah's Witnesses to the list of extremists and terrorists. Most of the people on the list are believers between 40 and 60 years old.
• On June 7, 2022, the European Court of Human Rights declared the ban on Jehovah's Witnesses organizations and the subsequent persecution of believers illegal. From the point of view of the ECHR, the decision to liquidate the organization and criminal cases against Jehovah’s Witnesses is based on an overly broad definition of “extremism”, which in Russian legislation “can be applied to absolutely peaceful forms of expression.”
• In October 2021, the Plenum of the Supreme Court clarified the application of “anti-extremist” legislation. The document, in particular, states that actions “consisting solely of the exercise of the right to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, including through individual or joint professing of religion, performing divine services or other religious rites and ceremonies, do not in themselves constitute a crime , provided for in Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (Participation in the activities of an extremist organization - OVD-Info ).” According to OVD-Info lawyer Tatyana Glushkova, these changes allow courts to terminate criminal cases brought against former members of liquidated religious organizations (for example, Jehovah's Witnesses).